As is known, operating electronic components, such as electronic devices or systems, produce heat. This heat should be removed in order to maintain device junction temperatures within desirable limits, with failure to remove heat effectively resulting in increased device temperatures, and potentially leading to thermal runaway conditions. Several trends in the electronics industry have combined to increase the importance of thermal management, including heat removal for electronic devices, including technologies where thermal management has traditionally been less of a concern, such as CMOS. In particular, the need for faster and more densely packed circuits has had a direct impact on the importance of thermal management. For example, power dissipation, and therefore heat production, increases as device operating frequencies increase. Also, increased operating frequencies may be possible at lower device junction temperatures. Further, as more and more devices are packed onto a single chip, heat flux (Watts/cm2) increases, resulting in the need to remove more power from a given size chip or module. These trends have combined to create applications where it is no longer desirable to remove heat from modern devices, and electronic systems containing such devices, solely by traditional air cooling methods, such as by using air cooled heat sinks with heat pipes or vapor chambers. Such air cooling techniques are inherently limited in their ability to extract heat from electronic components with moderate to high power density.